Abstract
During the last quarter century, the theory of scientific methodology has come in for more than its share of drubbing from a variety of sources. Polanyi, Quine, Hesse, Kuhn, Wittgenstein, and a host of others have urged the abandonment of the methodological enterprise. Most of the arguments against methodology boil down to one of two sorts. They typically allege either (a) that the rules of scientific investigation radically underdetermine theory choice (and are thereby presumed to be impotent), or else (b) that the explicit rules of methodology are so vague and ambiguous that they forbid nothing1. I have tried to show elsewhere that the arguments lying behind these particular allegations will not support the conclusions drawn from them.2 But I have yet to come to terms in print with the writings of the most forceful and persistent critic of methodology in our time, Paul Feyerabend.
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Notes
For a lengthy discussion of the first point, see my “De-Mystifying Underdetermination”, in W. Savage (ed.), Minn. Stud. In Phil, of Science, forthcoming … For a briefer critique of the argument about the ambiguity of rules, see my “Kuhn’s Critique of Methodology”, in J. Pitt, (ed.), Change and Progress in Modern Science (Reidel: Dordrecht, 1985), pp. 283–289.
Against Method (Verso: London, 1978), pp. 190–191.
For a small sampling, see for instance, P. Machamer, “Feyerabend and Galileo”, Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 4 (1973), 1ff.
J. McEvoy, “A ‘Revolutionary’ Philosophy of Science”, Phil. Sci. 42 (1915), 49ff.
See my “Progress or Rationality?” American Philosophical Quarterly, 24 (1987), 19–31.
Science in a Free Society (NLB: London, 1978), p. 212.
Ibid., p. 212.
Ibid.
Ibid.
P. Feyerabend, “Problems of Empiricism”, in R. Colodny (ed.), Beyond the Edge of Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, 1965), p. 164. Italics in original. (Hereafter: PE.)
PE, p. 164. Italics in original.
PE, p. 174.
PE, pp. 174–75. Italics in original.
PE, p. 175.
Newton-Smith, with some justification, holds that Feyerabend’s version of the consistency condition “has not been advocated by any influential scientist or philosopher in this century.” (op. cit., p. 131)
See, for instance, John Worrall, “Is the Empirical Context of a Theory Dependent on Its Rivals?” Acta Philosophica Finnica, 1982, pp. 298–310.
PE, p. 176.
PE, p.176.
PE, p. 176.
PE, p. 176.
P. Feyerabend, Against Method, (London, 1978), p. 39. (Hereafter: AM.)
AM, p.40.
AM, p.40.
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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Laudan, L. (1989). For Method: Or, Against Feyerabend. In: Brown, J.R., Mittelstrass, J. (eds) An Intimate Relation. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 116. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2327-0_15
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